Pa Nature Journeys: New twist on a Christmas tradition

A fun way to wrap up the festive Christmas season is modifying an old tradition and combining it with what has become a new tradition. The old tradition needing modification is decorating one’s Christmas tree with fruit, popcorn and other edibles. The new tradition is grandparents spending significant amounts of time raising their grandchildren.

Combining these two traditions can help our avian friends survive winter, while providing two enjoyable activities for grandparents and grandchildren to share and learn from. Adults and youngsters making treats for winter birds is fun. Grandchildren and grandparents watching birds enjoying those treats and learning about birds is also fun. It also adds to the 2½ million to 3 million Pennsylvania birders.

People once decorated Christmas trees with various foodstuffs as a regular part of their tree decorations. That tradition was sometimes a way to save money on tree ornaments and decorations. In other cases wrapping food in spirals around the tree was just another tree-trimming technique. The point of the hung foodstuff was originally decorative.

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The current point of our decorative foodstuff is to provide food for birds, activities for youngsters and adults, and bird-watching opportunities for the young and less-young.

Unlike traditional tree decorating with foodstuffs, we will not decorate the tree until after it has served its usefulness inside, stripped off its decorative ornaments and moved to a likely spot outside. Do not feel restricted to one tree if this enjoyable project appeals to you; surely some of your neighbors will allow you to use their discarded trees.

I like my bird-feeding Christmas trees standing, but there is nothing wrong with laying them on the ground. Either standing or laying, once-used Christmas trees offer great protection for birds from the wind and cold. Cinder blocks make good tree-stands, or one can make tree-stands from scrap lumber.

Trees used to shield and feed birds should be placed similarly to where birdfeeders would be sited: far enough from live trees that perched hawks cannot attack them, but close enough to trees that the birds can quickly escape to cover. Part of the beauty of using Christmas trees as feeding stations is that small birds can also obtain cover from predators and bad weather within their boughs.

Importantly, your bird-feeding Christmas trees should be located so inhabitants and guests at your home can comfortably observe birds as they forage, and flitter about from place to place. While it is important to feed the birds, it is also important to be able to enjoy watching them. It is especially important for youngsters to view the feeding birds and gain an interest in them and their activities.

Things to avoid putting out for birds include: salted nuts, old or spoiled birdfeed or other outdated foodstuff or grease, or sugared cereals.

Be sure to keep your bird-feeding activities age-appropriate with children; they should not use sharp needles to string food items to hang on trees. Only adults should handle any cooking involved.

A nice part of this post-holiday activity, when winter is setting in, is that most of the work of gathering and constructing the edible ornaments can be accomplished indoors where it is warm; both youngsters and seniors will warm up to this part of the fun. Once the tasty, bird attracting, nutritious decorations are constructed they can be taken outside and easily placed on your Christmas tree(s).

One of the fun parts of readying food for the tree is stringing heavy thread through popcorn, dried and fresh fruits like raisins, cranberries, apples, oranges, pears, peaches, blueberries, small birdseed ornaments, roasted potatoes and unsalted peanuts. Strings of food can be long or be made in short strands to hang from individual branches.

Care is required to determine who is old enough to wield sharp needles. Some of the youngsters will be too young to use needles, so allow them to wrap plenty of strands around the trees.

This activity can easily be continued for weeks if the youngsters enjoy it. Feeding birds is a great way to get grandchildren interested in birds and nature, and spending time together watching birds while promoting a worthwhile lifetime activity.

John McGonigle lives in the West Chester area and writes for numerous nature publications.